Better Than Me

"Riley!" Corinne stopped Riley before she could unlock her car door.

Once again, the girls had just bid farewell to Andy, Christian, Jake, Jeremy, and Ashley at LAX. Riley had fled the airport as soon as the guys had vanished through the gate where their flight was boarding. She and Corinne had put up a good front for the guys, pretending that nothing was wrong, but both girls knew they needed to talk about Jacob's presence at the party. The problem was that Riley didn't think she could handle another confrontation at the moment. Two in less than twenty-four hours was her limit.

Swallowing a sigh, Riley faced Corinne. She wasn't that surprised to see Sammi standing slightly behind Corinne.

"Can we do this later?" Riley asked.

"Why? Do you have something more important to do?" Corinne shot back.

Riley said nothing. Corinne knew that their friendship was one of Riley's top priorities and that there was no way Riley could answer that challenge.

"Let's go to the house," Corinne proposed. "We can order some Chinese, have a couple of drinks, and talk."

"Fine," Riley submitted. She climbed in her car and listening to Avenged Sevenfold, she followed the other two girls to the house Christian and Corinne lived in. Corinne called their favorite Chinese place on the way and ordered all of the things Riley liked best. She was going to send Sammi to pick it up in a bit so that she and Riley could discuss some matters privately.

At the house, Corinne mixed drinks: a White Russian for Riley, a margarita for Sammi, and a Long Island ice tea for herself. Then, the girls went out on the deck to enjoy the last of the day's sunlight.

"There's no use acting like we don't owe you an apology," Corinne said to Riley, direct as always. "We're sorry."

Sammi nodded in agreement.

"But," Corinne added. "Not for what we did."

Riley's brow furrowed in confusion.

"We should have warned you," Corinne clarified. "We're sorry we didn't. But we're not sorry for inviting Jacob to the party."

"Y'all could have caused a lot of shit," Riley said, recalling Jacob's kisses and picturing what would have happened had Andy discovered them. He wouldn't have believed her explanation that she'd mistaken Jacob for him, not when he'd already been convinced that she was cheating on him with Jacob.

"We didn't know the guys were going to show up," Sammi said. "We just thought we were giving you another chance to see Jacob."

"Why?" Riley voiced the question that had been nagging her mind since Jacob had informed her that he'd been invited by Corinne. "Why did y'all want me to have that chance?"

Sammi and Corinne exchanged a glance. Both of them smiled. When they looked back at Riley, there was no mistaking the affection they felt for her.

"We want you to be happy," Sammi said.

"Oookay? And how does Jacob factor in to my happiness?"

Corinne made an exasperated sound. "Are you being dense on purpose?"

"No. I just don't see how Jacob has anything to do with, well, anything."

"Yeah? That's because you've never watched yourself around him." Corinne shook her head. "Every time y'all are together, you light up like it's Christmas morning and you know that the one thing you really wanted is under the tree."

"You do," Sammi said. "That night we all had dinner, it was all over your face when you looked at him. You were happy that he was there."

"Because he's my friend!" Riley exclaimed.

"And we're not implying otherwise," Corinne responded calmly.

"So why did you wait until a night that Andy wasn't supposed to be there to invite him to hang out?" Riley demanded. It was a stupid question; the answer would have been apparent to anyone that had witnessed Andy's reaction in Minneapolis to the news that Riley was going to Alabama the next day.

"We didn't want to start a fight between you and Andy," Sammi said, eyes flicking to Corinne. "Again."

"We know he's not okay with the friendship," Corinne said. "He's made his suspicions very clear."

Riley opened her mouth to speak, but Corinne talked over her. "Our food should be ready by now. Sammi, will you go get it?"

"Sure." Sammi set aside her half-finished margarita and cut through the house, slipping on her shoes on her way to the driveway and her car.

Riley, of course, knew that Corinne had planned this to get her alone. The long-time best friends still tended to keep some things secret from the others. Cori thinks I have something to hide. Interesting.

The sound of Sammi's car had faded into the distance and there was only silence, except for the birds.

"How many times have you and Jacob met up here in L.A.?" Corinne queried.

"The night after the Golden God Awards and last night, thanks to you and Sammi."

"Don't insult my intelligence, Riley. How many times, really?"

Riley became angry and defensive. "Why? You believe the same thing Andy believes, that I'm cheating on him with Jacob?"

"No, I don't believe that," Corinne said. "I know you, Riley. You wouldn't cheat."

Riley's anger and defensiveness drained away at Corinne's earnest words and she sighed. "There was only one other time. About three weeks after the Golden God Awards. He wanted me to come to the studio. I canceled on you, Sammi, and Piper and hung out with him instead."

"What happened?"

"He played me some stuff he's been working on with Adler. We talked. I went home. The end."

"Riley..." Corinne hesitated, frowning. "Has anything ever happened between the two of you? I don't think you would ever cheat on Andy, but if you got caught up in the moment and, ya know..." she trailed off awkwardly.

"Yeah, something happened," Riley snapped, flaring up with anger again. "I kissed him last night while thinking he was Andy. Gee, how ever could that have come about?"

Corinne ignored her last remark. "And that's when he told you it was him and that I was the one who invited him?"

"Not exactly. He kissed me back." Riley felt warm at the memory. "He didn't stop me until I was about to take it further."

"Oh."

"I saw him this morning, at the studio. We talked about it."

Corinne waited. She figured she could guess what was coming next.

"He, um, admitted that he's attracted to me," Riley mumbled, staring into her glass. "He said he let it go on because he knew that was going to be his only chance to be with me like that." She took a big gulp of her White Russian. "I told him I can't have anything to do with him anymore. Andy was right about Jacob's feelings."

"But wrong about his intentions," Corinne interjected on Jacob's behalf.

"It doesn't matter. He's going to fuck everything up, even if he doesn't mean to. I can't risk that."

Corinne kept her mouth shut. She knew Riley wouldn't listen to her at this moment. However, it was one of the hardest things she'd ever done. The reality was that Riley was handling this all wrong and possibly making one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

**********

Andy was sprawled on the not-so-comfortable excuse for a couch at the front of the bus, his head resting on one arm and his feet propped on the other. The window above him was partially opened, sucking the smoke from his cigarette out as the bus sped along the highway.

Two more weeks had gone by. He and Riley were in touch every day. Hearing her voice only made him more anxious for the tour to be over. He needed to dedicate some time to their relationship. Things were rocky, and he wanted to get them back on track.

Riley was trying. She was behaving like her old self and had casually mentioned that she hadn't spoken to Jacob since her trip to Alabama.

That piece of information had left Andy feeling a lot better. He was still unable to totally banish his suspicions, though: that the reason Riley was doing what she was doing was because she had something to feel guilty about.

Andy hated that their trust was damaged, but he couldn't forget the expression on her face that night he'd walked in on her with Jacob in the kitchen. She'd looked guilty. Andy couldn't read Jacob and hadn't really attempted to. Riley coming to him with that fake smile and kissing him...that had been for his benefit, not Jacob's. She had been set on convincing him that it was nothing more than an insignificant conversation between friends.

"Friends." Right. Don't make me laugh, Andy thought, blowing a stream of smoke in the direction of the window.

Everything Riley had done after becoming reacquainted with Jacob had been a sign that she was hiding something. Lying for those moments alone with Jacob in the kitchen; automatically going on the defensive when Andy wanted to talk about it; accusing Andy of not trusting her; and, of course, planning the trip to Alabama to visit Lynam without telling Andy.

Andy wondered if she'd ever actually done anything with Jacob, or if she'd just been tempted. Jacob had been interested in Riley from the beginning. Riley could say otherwise, but Andy had seen it in the other man's eyes the night they met.

There's no way she cheated, Andy told himself, pitching his cigarette through the open window. I know her. She wouldn't do that.

However, he wasn't filled with conviction. There were doubts. Had she been with Jacob while Andy was on the road? With Jacob's increasingly frequent trips to Los Angeles to record with Adler, it could be quite the convenient set up for the pair.

Has Jacob kissed her? Touched her? Fucked her?

The idea threatened to consume Andy with rage and jealousy. She was his. She loved him. What could Jacob ever offer her? Yeah, he was now singing and writing for Adler, but who was he, really? Just a band guy from Alabama who had never managed to break free of the bar scene. Lynam had had some success, yet their weekends were spent playing bars in towns no one's ever heard of in Alabama.

Riley's not a gold-digger, Andy's rational side piped up. It's not about his level of fame.

True. Which meant that Jacob had something that Andy didn't.

Maybe he's just that good in bed.

No. Sex wasn't the answer. It couldn't be. Riley liked sex, but it wasn't ranked high on her list of important factors for a relationship. She had made Andy wait a year--sex wasn't her top priority.

"I thought he could better understand what I was feeling because he's at the same stage of his life," Riley had said, admitting that she'd revealed her fears to Jacob long before bringing them to Andy's attention.

That had to be it. That was what Jacob had that Andy didn't. He was the same age as Riley.

The age difference between Riley and Andy had never mattered until that stupid class reunion. What happened at that reunion to make Riley so sensitive to that gap all of the sudden?

Andy didn't have an answer to that. Riley had simply said that it had hit her that weekend. She was almost twenty-eight, dating a man who was almost twenty-four. She had been out of high school for ten years.

"I felt old for the first time ever," she'd remarked.

Had that been what drove her to Jacob? She'd been desperate for some affirmation that she was still attractive, that she hadn't lost anything in those ten years? Did she believe that Andy was going to start looking at girls his own age or younger? That he would decide she was too old? Or maybe that he already had?

She didn't say any of that. And I have no proof that she's cheated on me.

Andy sighed. He was going to have to let it go. Whatever had happened was over now. Riley had shared her fears with him, and she was no longer having any contact with Jacob (or so she claimed).

As soon as I get home, this will all be put to rest for good.

In the meantime, Andy was just going to have to stop dwelling on shit that he wasn't even sure had happened. That was poison to the relationship.